


Euphony

by allthemeadowswide



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War I, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 13:58:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11784612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthemeadowswide/pseuds/allthemeadowswide
Summary: April 1917. WWI. Victory in war comes at a price. Brook War Hospital, Woolwich, and that old, old lie.





	Euphony

**Author's Note:**

> This is for all of the lovely mikenana & Mike Squad appreciators who follow me on Tumblr, in particular [Sara](http://trash-god.tumblr.com/), [Vicallision](http://vicallision.tumblr.com/), and [Lenniikins](http://lenniikins.tumblr.com/). Thank you all so much for your support! I hope you enjoy this little AU. ♥

> 19 April 1917

It was only for a moment, Nanaba promised herself, wiping her hands carefully on her stained apron and lifting the newspaper off of the little break room table. The paper had lost its creased folds, the edges worn already. She barely skimmed the headline; it was always something big and eye-catching that made a person feel good but which, under closer scrutiny, lacked depth and meaning. Last week it had been “VIMY RIDGE CAPTURED!” in all capital letters. It was good news, but she wasn’t naïve enough to enjoy the headlines on their own merit anymore: not when she knew the cost of a victory during wartime.

After a glance around the tiny room, she flipped the paper open, eyes scanning the pages. Page two, three… The door creaked and she froze; it was the worst possible response to getting caught doing something wrong and yet, for her, completely instinctual. Her eyes flew to the doorway but it was only one of the other VADs, uniform clean yet, rubbing her eyes as if doing so might erase some of the things she’d seen on her last shift. Nanaba offered her a hesitant smile and returned to the paper.

She wasn’t sure where Father was, anymore. His last letter had come months ago and it had been written in a hurry, telling her only how difficult it was on the Western Front even for an officer of his standing, how it felt to him to see young men die, and what he thought of boys enlisting as men.

She skimmed the wartime articles for his name but found nothing.

Chewing absently on her lower lip, she let her eyes dart between the doorway, where the other VAD had failed to close the door, and the paper, which contained the latest updates following the early successes at Vimy Ridge on page six: rather far back in the paper, considering it was still a fairly recent victory.

> **…the great value of our recent advance here lies in the fact that we have everywhere driven the enemy from high ground and robbed him of observation. Having secured these high seats and enthroned ourselves, it is not necessarily easy to continue the rapid advance.**

_Of course_ , Nanaba thought, but she kept reading, intrigued by a life she had only ever seen half of.

> **An attack down the forward slope of high ground, exposed to the fire of lesser slopes beyond, is often extremely difficult and now on the general front…**

“What are you doing?”

Nanaba jumped, finger joints all but locking, her hold on the newspaper turning embarrassingly strong. She swallowed hard and looked up to see one of the professional nurses staring her down.

“…Reading,” she said, hardly able to force the words from her lips. Father would call her response impertinent, she realized a moment too late. It was sass to state the obvious like that—or it was avoidance, and both were rotten. She lowered her eyes again, scrambling for a more respectful, or at least honest, response.

> **…there must intervene a laborious period, with which we were familiar at the Somme, of systemic hammering and storming of individual positions—**

Nanaba yanked her gaze back up; she wasn’t supposed to continue reading when she was being scolded at to stop. “Ah, my father is…” she managed after a moment. “He’s out there. I just…”

The nurse’s eyes softened, just slightly.

It wasn’t compassion for a young girl who missed her father so much as an understanding that Nanaba—now past the easy marrying years—was reliant on her father to not be living on the street.

“I know, dear,” the nurse said, “but reading about it won’t help him—or anyone. Your time is best served on duty by making sure the men who can’t fight anymore have clean sheets and bandages.”

“Yes ma’am,” she said, her voice hardly louder than a whisper. The other VADs continued to stare even after the nurse left the room, closing the door quietly behind her, so Nanaba folded up the paper again and set it down, not bothering to finish the article.

* * *

 

Brook War Hospital was a busy place, housing more than twice as many beds for the injured as it had had when it was still just a general fever hospital.

Nanaba worked in the laundry. It wasn’t the most glamorous of jobs, but at least it gave her something to do during the long days when everything seemed so uncertain. Father had been called away at the first of it, in the summer of 1914. The silence had been kind to her at first, but eventually it began to feel as awful as Father had always been after a few stiff drinks.

Changing bedsheets was disgusting at times, but the men needed it done. So what if her arms were tired at the end of the day from lifting mattresses to strip and refit bedding? If this was all she could offer the effort, all she could do to ensure the war ended sooner rather than later… Well, it was worth it—it _would_ be worth it. She wanted to believe that and prayed for it, sometimes, when she had a moment.

A large part of her hoped the bedsheets she was changing were for men who had recovered, who had even walked out of the hospital on their own two legs, but that thought brought with it a weight, too—that if they were healthy they would be heading right back to the action again, and next time…perhaps they would not be so lucky as to end up in a hospital.

The bedding she threw into the dirty-laundry cart smelled of sweat and iodine. The man who had laid in this bed had lost an arm and too much blood with it. He might have recovered but for the infection; all the nurses had been able to do for him was delay the inevitable. Mr. Erwin Smith had not gone home—at least not to his earthly one.  He’d been in the bed two weeks too long, tossing his head and weakly muttering about his father. A shame, some of the VADs tittered, that such a handsome man should die.

Nanaba didn’t much care about his looks. She wondered instead about his family, the father he had spoken about in hushed feverish tones.

She was always wondering about things like that—and about what it might feel like to make the journey to see a beloved relative only for them to die before you’d even darkened the door.

The fresh bedding smelled softer, maybe a bit like home. She wondered who the next patient to take Mr. Smith’s place would be even as she moved down to change sheets on the bed of one Mr. Gelgar; whether or not that was his given or surname she wasn’t sure and he wouldn’t say. He liked to smile and flirt a little with the nurses now, but she’d seen him when he’d first arrived. She had barely changed the bedding after the evacuation of its previous tenant before he’d been dumped on it, sweaty and groaning and missing a leg at the knee. Really, he hadn’t been much different than any of the other amputees, then, the bandages dirty from the journey and barely effective. It was his recovery that let him stand apart: he accepted his plight and even managed to joke about it, at least during the day. Lynne, who was the ward’s professional nurse on the evening shift, had told her that he was almost a different person when he was dreaming. He was just as shell-shocked and afraid of what would happen to him as everyone else was. He was just better at hiding it: usually behind gentle teasing and playful requests aimed at Lynne to please shave his face because he couldn’t stand it feeling itchy.

He hobbled around the tiny space between his bed and the next one over, a crutch under one arm and a hand raking back through his brownish hair.

“You’ll be going home soon,” Nanaba told him.

He only paused his movement for a moment, almost too small a slice of time to notice, but she was accustomed to seeing things like that. In a place like this, it always came down to the smallest things. “Sounds great,” he said.

She wondered what his situation was. In all of his frantic dreams he’d never once mumbled a single thing about his family. Maybe he didn’t have one, or he was estranged from them, or they had died in the war—all were equally possible.

“Someone else will need this bed soon enough.” She didn’t mean to sound so grave, but in the ward below, she saw rows of men who might not live to see tomorrow. Comparatively speaking, Gelgar was fortunate no matter what his situation at home was. At least he was being given a chance.

He was quiet a moment, no doubt more than aware of how lucky he really was. At least he could still get around on his own—not well, but he wasn’t confined to a bed and he could feed himself. His surprisingly light brown eyes met hers, a smile twitching at one corner of his mouth.

“You got someone in this war, too, right?” he asked after a moment.

She paused in untucking his sheets, nodded a bit.

She half-expected him to say something about his family: to mention a parent or brother who was at war, or maybe what he might feel when he saw his mother’s face again.

But he just returned the motion of a nod, his smile fading. “So you know a bit what it’s like.”

She wondered how long he might have been at war and shook her head. “I know _this_ ,” she told him, balling up his sheets and tossing them in the cart before she reached for a fresh set. “I know…how many men come in here and I know how many leave on their own.”

“It’s shit, really,” he said lightly, the smile completely gone, now. “But I guess at least you get to see the ones who have a chance.”

Like her father’s letters had said, the men out on the field, in the trenches… They saw the reality in its starkest terms: they watched men die before they even had the option of medical aid, some blown to bits or worse. Nanaba swallowed hard and nodded again. After this she had to change the bedding on the floor below, and then the floor below that, and then she had to wash the soiled bedding, some worse than others. Most of it pretty bad.

Up here, it wasn’t so terrible. This floor belonged to men who weren’t actively dying. Usually.

“It’ll be over soon,” he said, leaning hard on his crutch. The knuckles of his hand were white.

“The war?”

“Yeah.”

“They thought it was going to be over by now.”

“Yeah, well, that’s how you get idiots like me to sign up, isn’t it? Be a hero, do the right thing and serve your country, the war won’t last long and your family—well, they won’t be ashamed of you for being too scared to fight like a man.” There was a spark of humor in his voice, but his eyes were solemn, his hair all but falling into them. “A risk worth taking, you know.”

She shook out the fresh folded sheets with a _snap_. “Was it worth it?”

There was a slight shrug of one of his shoulders. “I’d be out there by now, anyway,” he said, “and probably just as likely to have ended up here.”

Unspoken between them was the good fortune he’d had not to die in the trenches like so many others.

“Besides,” he continued with a smile, “I heard that this is where all the cute girls are.”

“Oh?” she asked, allowing a small smile of her own to pass over her features. “Fancy anyone in particular?”

“You’re all out of my league,” he admitted, sweat starting to bead on his forehead—not from the discussion, but from being left standing so long. He wasn’t fully recovered yet, but soon he would be. And then he would go home—whatever that meant for him.

Nanaba hurried with the sheets, allowing the conversation to stay lighthearted. “That wasn’t my question.”

“I’d never given it a whole lot of thought before, but I guess I just can’t deny the appeal of dark hair and eyes.”

“Not to mention the circles _under_ the eyes,” she teased, thinking immediately of Lynne: her long hair falling out of its hurriedly-tied style and her brown eyes, always looking as if she’d only slept a few hours.

“ _Especially_ that,” he said, and sounded as if he really meant it.

Nanaba patted down the sheets and offered him a smile that she hoped wasn’t insultingly compassionate. “I’m not a nurse,” she said, “but I think you should take it easy for a little while.”

He laughed, a deep chuffing sound, and immediately took a seat on the edge of the bed. “Advice I’m willing to take, but just this once. I’ll see ya tomorrow.”

* * *

 

 

> 20 April 1917

The bed previously occupied by Mr. Erwin Smith was now taken by a man who was little more than a boy, his hair cropped close at the back of his neck and left to grow longer where it had been under his helmet.

Nanaba couldn’t help him, being there only to take and switch laundry, but he looked so much like a child in sleep that she couldn’t help but put her hand on his head, smoothing back his hair.

Her touch must have made its way into his dream, one besotted by visions of his time in the trenches, no doubt, for he said something under his breath that she couldn’t quite catch. When she leaned closer, heart shifting painfully against her ribs, she heard, “Yes, sir. 18, sir.” And then, a few moments later, “Sorry, Mama, I’m real sorry.”

He was yet a boy after all—one who had wanted very badly to be a man.

* * *

 

The paper still talked of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Nanaba supposed they had to talk up anything positive about this war to keep morale up, but it wouldn’t be long until something bad happened to balance things out. At least, that was how it always seemed to go. Gains never came in a war without equivalent cost, after all. More than a year volunteering had taught her that much.

It wasn’t until April 28th that news of the next stage of that particular fight made its way into the _Times_ : The Second Battle of the Scarpe, which had happened less than a week earlier, had gone well. Thanks to the combined efforts of the 63rd, 15th, 50th, and 29th Divisions, Guémappe, Gavrelle, and high ground overlooking Fontaine-lez-Croisilles and Cherisy were held by the British. Nanaba couldn’t quite put a picture to the story in the paper, but it sounded to her that just like the Battle of Vimy Ridge, victory was assured thanks to a unified effort.

Columns toward the back of the newspaper speculated on what might happen in the war now that the United States had officially declared its involvement. Most seemed to think something good would come of it. The hospital staff were more worried about when the next wave of injured men would come in and fill up all of the spare beds and then some; they couldn’t take more than they had the capacity to care for, but the other hospitals, both in London and out in the fields, were operating nearly at full capacity already, too.

She flipped to the back to scan the latest casualty list and when she reached the bottom, she looked up to see one of the younger VADs watching her with soft, doe-like eyes.

“Nothing?” she asked.

Nanaba shook her head. “No. Have you read it?”

The other woman nodded slowly, tucking a strand of her bright hair back into its style. “I always look,” she admitted, “but I wonder…if it’s worth it. He could be—” She shook her head, unable to finish the sentence.

“I think it’s worth looking,” Nanaba said. “Just to know. Just in case.” It was possible they’d be unidentifiable and would never make the list, but if they did die, and _were_ identifiable, she’d rather know. But that was just her. Some were best left steeped in ignorance. For them, it made it easier to carry on.

“I’m Petra, by the way.”

“Nanaba.”

They didn’t shake hands.

“I couldn’t sit at home anymore. I-I had to…” Petra waved a hand.

Had to do something, had to feel useful. Nanaba understood that. She nodded. Most of the VADs were here for that very reason. “Who’s out there for you?” she asked.

“My best friend.” The words were spoken without hesitation, earnest and soft—truly touching. “He was itching to join up… Become a hero, you know—send money back to his parents. He was getting teased by the others because his dad was too old to join and his brothers too young. So away he went.”

 _To die in their place_ Nanaba didn’t dare say, but the thought shone bright and terrible in her mind. She just set the paper down and nodded again.

“What about you? Who are you looking for in that list?”

She forced herself to try and maintain some semblance of normalcy. “My father,” she said, voice grave. “He was…already in the military. An officer. I don’t know where he is now.”

Petra looked away. “Letters run slow,” she admitted. “Oluo writes me whenever he can, but sometimes it’s months between deliveries… It’s nice to have a bunch of them to read all at once, though… I can kind of hear his voice in my head when I read them.”

Nanaba wondered when her father’s next letter would arrive and forced herself to her feet. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I, ah, have to—get back—”

* * *

 

 

> 28 April 1917, 0400 hours

Major Mike Zacharias looked out into the darkness, his hand finding the compass in his pocket for the fifth time in as many minutes. He was waiting for orders from above, bound to come at any moment, but he couldn’t bear to sit still.

“Nerves, Mike?” Second Lieutenant Henning Clark asked, but in the palm of _his_ hand was his own issued compass.

Mike shook his head, though only slightly. He couldn’t be sure what it was. Things had gone well. Earlier in the month, the Battle of Vimy Ridge had gone much better than expected thanks to the Canadian Corps, but he knew the reason for that victory; every division had been given very specific orders, so much so that the loss of officers hadn’t impacted each unit’s ability to carry out their orders. This was different. All officers of the 63rd Division had been given compass bearings to assist in maintaining the correct direction of the planned attack, but the enlisted men didn’t have that advantage—or perhaps that _burden_.

“Any minute now,” Henning said under his breath, turning to look at all of the men waiting behind them.

The 111th would flank on one side and Greenland Hill offered some protection on the other. If they stayed on course it could be a swift and decisive battle. Another victory for Britain.

Mike crossed his arms over his chest to resist reaching for his compass or his watch, both little more than pathetic comfort objects until they were given their orders to move. He caught the eye of one of his fellow officers to the side, and a slight shake of the other man’s dark head told him he hadn’t heard anything yet, either. Soon. It was only a matter of time.

As Henning had just said: any minute now they’d be caught in the thick of it. He wondered how many of them would walk away from this battle, and almost against his will he pictured his mum’s face as it had been the last time he’d seen her. His dad had stood beside her with a straight back, eyes just a little moist. _You’ll be all right_ , he’d said, and, _I love you_.

But his mum—she was crying, tears seeping into the wrinkles on her face as if they were trying to hide there. _My baby_ , she’d whispered, holding him tight, almost rocking him as if he were four years old again instead of rapidly nearing forty. His own eyes had watered at her words or the motion—maybe both. God, he loved his parents, but he had always been a little more like his mum, shy and awkward and in possession of a great deal of patience.

 _I love you_ , he’d said to her, knowing better than to make a promise he might have to break. Keenly he remembered wanting more than anything to tell her he’d be back before she knew it, ready and eagerly awaiting one of her cobblers. It wasn’t the food he wanted; it was the comforting familiarity of his mum’s kitchen where he always knew exactly what to expect. What he wouldn’t do for that feeling right now, he thought.

He blinked and it was 0420 hours. The horizon was still dark. Even in uniform, it was chilly. Mike reached for his compass.

Five minutes later, at 0425 hours, the 63rd Division was ordered to attack.

* * *

 

 

> 0455 hours

There was a grunt as Thomas fell to the ground just in front of Mike. He hesitated, almost stopped. Just last week the men had jovially wished him a happy birthday— _and many more_. Swallowing, Mike pushed forward. He couldn’t stop. They’d barely started. Maybe someone else would take him back, someone smaller, someone more afraid. It was Mike’s job as an officer to hold position, to help keep the group together.

Light swelled gently in the east. The 63rd were gaining ground, but even in the dark it was easy to tell it was coming at a high cost. He fumbled for his compass, but he couldn’t see it in the low light. It didn’t feel right, though; something was still off. His heart beat loud in his throat as he moved with the others. It wasn’t the time for second-guessing himself or the other officers. What would happen if he contradicted orders? A shift in direction? Nobody would listen. He’d just confuse those who were still standing—and there were precious few of them now compared to how many there had been even just an hour ago.

The opposition kept countering and the 63rd kept pushing back at them, but every time each conflict ended the ranks felt thinner. Mike had already lost track of how many back-and-forths they’d endured. Too many.

And something still felt wrong.

It nagged at him but he couldn’t stop to allow himself time to think; none of them had that luxury. The air was heavy and thick with the smells of war: blood and gunpowder and dirt. Shouting in the distance and guns too close to his face blurred together with the death throes of both horses and men in a horrific cacophony. He ought to be used to it, he knew, but he wasn’t. It turned his stomach and he opened his mouth, desperately forcing himself to pull in air.

It wasn’t the time to be frightened, he tried to remind himself. _Fight_. Fight. Come on, Mike, get it together. This is a war you’re fighting in, not the alley after school thirty years ago. Back then it was _okay_ to be afraid. But _now_ —

Henning, having gotten ahead of him, stopped suddenly, shoulders stiff—a movement Mike recognized all too well as a person having just been shot. He saw it almost in shadow: the silhouette of his second lieutenant jerking slightly before stumbling backward.

He couldn’t quite catch him and kneeled down, scooping the other man up off the ground and over his shoulder in one hurried motion. Something was wrong, but was it really that way or did he only want to believe it because he felt seconds away from death, himself? He could barely find his voice, and when he did it cracked under the weight of his words. “It’s okay, I’ve got you. You’ll be all right.”

He almost choked on the hazy air as he turned with his new burden, just in time to watch a shell explode right in the middle of the ranks behind him. It scattered men and horses about as if they were little more than toys. He stared at the carnage, felt heat sear across his leg, and dropped his gun so that he could grab onto Henning with both arms, almost without realizing it was happening. He didn’t even notice his weapon fall hard against his half-buckled knee.

The arc of that shell—

He wasn’t sure whether it was his own voice shouting or someone else’s: it sounded so raw. “Back! Go back! _We’re in too far_!”

A few other voices joined in but he couldn’t hear them—couldn’t focus on the sound of the words over the pounding of his heart and the light softly exploding behind his eyes.

Ignoring the way it sent a sharp pain up into his hip, Mike forced his leg straight again and hefted Henning up against his shoulder. “You’ll see them again soon, now,” he thought he might have said, probably not loud enough for Henning to hear. “You won’t have to fight anymore and you’ll see your wife and kids. The baby, too. You haven’t seen the baby yet, remember…? You have—you need to see him.”

Half-empty promises, they echoed in his head.

But Henning had a chance, didn’t he, if Mike could get him to safety? To a medic?

The weak dawn only barely illuminated the battlefield as he stumbled back toward help; it was clear to him now that the 63rd had veered off-course, had lost the support of the 111th division as well as the 112th on the other side of them. He couldn’t quite put the thought to use through the pounding in his head but he knew what it meant. The 63rd wasn’t supposed to be that far in, but the Germans _were_ and British artillery was taking advantage of that—a mistake that would cost most of the 63 rd their lives.

Bile rose in his throat as he almost tripped over someone’s discarded weapon. Henning had gone limp in his arms.

“Soon,” he made sure to say, though it felt like it had taken him hours to walk the distance it had only taken the unit minutes to reach. It made sense: a road paved with corpses wasn’t easy to traverse.

The sun ought to have been higher by the time he reached help, but everything to him seemed to have only grown darker.

“Soldier, stop,” someone said, trying to intercept him. “What are you doing?”

Mike made his legs stop moving and blinked as if hopeful that it would fix his wavering vision. It didn’t. He opened his mouth to speak and hardly had a voice left. “…need…” he wheezed, all but falling to his knees when he tried to tell himself to just get down on one. Henning fell out of his arms, a heap on the ground, and Mike raised a hand to his mouth to cough, the sound raspy. “Needs help,” he managed afterward. God, it was hard to breathe. What the hell was his problem?

“There’s—”

“Please,” Mike tried, feeling frustrated. For a moment he was a little kid again, too stupid to be worth listening to. “He needs—”

The other soldier said something—but it was garbled and didn’t make sense.

All he wanted was some help for this other man; why couldn’t he make himself understood? He leaned forward, vision spotting as he put weight on his knee, and reached for Henning. The effort it took to force his fingers to close around the other man’s shoulder was unnatural, but he finally managed it.

“Please,” he said again, “help him…”

He felt like his lungs were cracked. He had to show this so that he’d know… With a little help, Henning would be okay; he’d recover in a hospital and go home to his wife and kids. He’d finally get to see his youngest; it was all he talked about, reciting his wife’s written description and quietly smiling to himself as he tried to picture his little boy. _The girls will dote on him, I think_ , he’d said. They were five and seven years old, perfect older sisters.

Come on, Mike. _Show him_. You need him to understand.

His eyes barely focused on Henning’s dark hair. It brushed his neck, now. No time to maintain it, he’d laughed once. _Not out here_. _Besides, the wife likes to cut it for me. I want to save the privilege for her._ For some reason Mike had thought it made a sweet little picture.

Henning’s neck was tilted forward and it made Mike feel sick. He hadn’t meant to drop him. _I’m sorry_ , he thought. _Soon_ —

He took a deep breath, gathering his strength and resolve, and through his dimming vision, he turned his second lieutenant over.

But where there had once been Henning’s deep-set eyes and wide nose, there was now nothing more than a mangled stretch of flesh and bone.


End file.
